by Anna Kunnecke
Wow do I love these women. Let me count the ways.
1. How they cry when they leave their babies the first time.
2. How they do it anyway. They go out into the world and forge identities, earn money, and pursue their passions while also being mothers.
3. How they beam when their kids run out to meet them in the evening.
4. How no one cares what you're cooking for dinner. Sometimes they even hoist bags of takeout with rueful grins.
5. How play-dates and birthday parties are rare and also optional, so we can maximize our family time without slighting school friendships.
6. How they send the fathers of their children to pick them up and drop them off. This is so new and brave in Japan that it's a revolutionary act of heroism on the part of both parents.
7. How no one uses the phrase "Mommy Wars."
8. How they come up with ingenious solutions to the working parent's dilemma, like dashing home first to start dinner before kid pickup, or the whole family bathing together, or having all their groceries delivered once a week.
9. How they have accepted my daughter into the community of their children.
10. How they fess up to verboten motherhood crimes like giving their kids antihistamines before boarding airplanes or letting them use a pacifier at age 3 to get to sleep. And then we laugh and laugh.
11. How when we see each other at parks, we wave, chat for a minute or two, and then go on our merry way. I have yet to encounter any of the park clique dramas that show up in grisly headlines.
12. How some of them work traditional corporate jobs, and some of them work part-time, and some of them bear the rumpled hair and stained fingers of artists, and some of them do yoga, and some have decided that it's more peaceful to run a household with the kids out of the house every day. And how that's all good.
13. How no one has asked me anxiously how we're doing on potty-training.
14. How they cheer each other on. They compliment each other's kids, hold each other's babies, and let down the veil of lonely perfection that is usually drawn over Japanese motherhood.
15. How they are my people, and I am happy in their midst.
*Daycare, preschool
Thanks for your article. had a great time reading your blogs..im gonna share it to my fellow moms im sure they will love your blog!